my grandpa is dying

he's in his last days, however many there may be. he's not even eating anymore; apparently you don't need food at this point. We went to visit him last friday, Good Friday, and i wish i hadn't. it was so strange to see him lying there all weak and fragile, barely mumbling things that didn't even make any sense. strange because he was a teacher and has always spoken well. he was very smart and you could tell he thought things through before he said them. and not just because he was getting slower. one of the special things about him was that he wrote poems. I got a poem every year on my birthday in the card, and i know everyone else in his family did too. during one of the worse times of his many hospital visits i wrote him a poem. i think he liked it. i remember all of our family gatherings being times when (as we got older) we didn't really look forward to the "program" my grandpa would have prepared, because it meant all of us (kids) looking at each other uncomfortably while we waited for our turn to read some passage of scripture or obscure article that we really didn't want to. Unfortunately, these things now seem to show how passionate he was about God and not forgetting Him in the holidays (all we wanted was to skip to that part where we got candy). I didn't spend as much time with him and my grandma as i did with my mom's parents, mostly because they seemed a bit older and a tad more eccentric i guess. my brother did, he's lucky to have a few more meaningful memories. i guess no one close to us will ever die without us thinking we didn't spend enough time with them, but in this case, i know i didn't.
it just seems like such a waste, even though he had a full life and made an impact on everyone in his family. it's hard to see someone reduced to a shadow of their former selves, if even that.
i don't know how people with no faith in God make it through death. knowing that this isn't the end, that we'll all see each other again where nothing sad can ever happen, makes this so much easier to handle. so, see you later grandpa.